Up close and personal: New articles detail the impact of sanctions on everyday life

Posted on July 31, 2013 by manijeh

As the US sanctions against Iran steadily erode living standards for ordinary Iranians, threatening the health and futures of millions of people, some excellent new investigative reporting is shedding light on just how the sanctions wreak their havoc. Two new articles look at the disproportionate effects on women, the sick and the poor. “When I Ran Out of Birth Control in Iran“, by Narges Bajoghli, provides a close-up look at the crisis in women’s reproductive health. “The Effects of The Economic Sanctions Against Iran“, by Mina Khanlarzadeh, combines first-hand accounts of life under the current sanctions regime with a history and analysis of sanctions as a form of slow violence and collective punishment.

Havaar’s campaign against sanctions on Iran is gaining steam

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Havaar

A few weeks ago Havaar launched our campaign calling on major bank CEOs to allow financial transactions for purchases of medicine and medical supplies for Iranians.

We feel very encouraged and empowered by the responses we have received from some of the people who signed the petition:

Sanctions, “smart” or comprehensive, are a form of warfare and a blunt weapon of aggression on the most vulnerable citizens, including infants, children and the aged. When the Health Sector is endangered as in Iran today, loss of life results – demonstrating how Sanctions constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Sanctions do not destroy governments, they destroy the basic human rights of human beings.

Denis J. Halliday
United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq from 1 September 1997 until 1998.

Campaigners dedicated to ending economic sanctions against Iraq learned from Iraqi mothers and children about how lethally punitive economic sanctions could be. The pediatrics wards of Iraqi hospitals were like death rows for infants. Now, ordinary Iranians with minimal capacity to control their government are nevertheless being punished by economic sanctions which forbid them access to life saving medicines. The Havaar campaign needs and deserves support from civil society around the world.

Kathy Kelly
Co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and a co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end economic sanctions against Iraq.

The U.S.-imposed sanctions regime has inflicted great suffering upon the Iranian people. As people of conscience, have to speak out and act decisively to end the sanctions and to ensure that Iranians have adequate access to life saving medicine and other necessities.

Azadeh Shahshahani
President, National Lawyers Guild.

We cannot condone the use of sanctions that are causing untold suffering to the Iranian people, as they deprive them of the most basic necessities in life, and are directed against a country that does not pose a danger to the United States. it is important then that we support the campaign HAVAAR is organizing.

Silvia Federici
Professor emerita and Teaching Fellow at Hofstra University, where she was a social science professor.

Other prominent signers include Anthony Alessandrini, Tariq Ali, Stanley Aronowitz, Medea Benjamin, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Arun Gupta, Chris Hedges, Zachary Lockman, David McReynolds, Molly Nolan, Vijay Prashad, Chris Toensing, Adaner Usmani and Julia Wrigley.

Sanctions as a Tool of War: A Comparative Look at Iraq and Iran

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Havaar

A Havaar forum hosted by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics.

The Graduate Center at the City University of New York
Skylight Room (Room 9100)
365 5th Ave.
New York, NY 10016

April 29, 7PM-9PM

Sanctions are still presented in mainstream political discussion as a peaceful alternative to military intervention. But the experience of Iraqis, whose society was devastated by over ten years of harsh economic sanctions, shows us that sanctions against countries that defy Washington are a form of collective punishment used to augment the effects of war and/or lay the groundwork for war. While sanctions against Iran have yet to reach the levels and effects experienced in Iraq, there is much to be learned by placing these two different cases in a common frame. How are sanctions used by the US as part of its efforts to dominate the Middle East? What are the effects they have on everyday life and on social movements? And how have activists attempted to organize transnational solidarity to oppose sanctions? This event will look at previous campaigns against sanctions in Iraq and help launch a new campaign against the medical shortages caused by sanctions against Iran.

Speakers:

Dr. Joy Gordon is a philosophy professor at Fairfield University, JD from Boston University School of Law, PhD from Yale. Published extensively on the UN sanctions on Iraq, including “Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions” (Harvard University Press 2010). Currently completing a book on the ethical aspects of economic sanctions. Recent work on the Iran sanctions includes “UN Sanctions on Iran: The Dance of Mutual Deniability“

Denis J. Halliday worked for the UN for 34 years – first as junior officer in Iran (1964-66), and finally as UN Assistant Secretary-General 1994-98. He volunteered to be the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq in 1997 and remained in his post until 1998 when he resigned in protest of the sanctions.

Hadi Kahalzadeh served as an economist for Iran’s Social Security Organization from 2003 to 2011. He was a member of the Iranian Students Office for Consolidating Unity (Daftar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat), the only democratically elected student body across the country. After graduating, he joined the progressive political party, the Iranian Alumni Organization, which was a strong ally of student, women’s rights, and labor movements. In 2006, Hadi was elected as a member of board of directors of Iran Parties House (IPH). He currently serves as a visiting scholar at the department of political science at Valdosta State University in Georgia.

Bitta Mostofi currently is a nonprofit, immigrant rights attorney (you can see it here on ḥow she works). She has also worked as a civil rights attorney and served on the board of directors of the Council on American Islamic Relations. Bitta has participated in anti-war and anti-sanctions campaigns, and was a co-coordinator for the Voices in the Wilderness; Iraq Peace Team from 2002-2003. In recent years Bitta has co-founded and worked with Where is my Vote, New York, which formed in the after math of the highly disputed 2009 Iranian presidential elections. WIMV-NY strives to raise the level of international solidarity with the citizens of Iran in their movement towards social justice and democratic change and to speak out against the Iranian state’s human rights violations.

Sina is a founding member of Havaar: Iranian Initiative Against War, Sanctions and State Repression and an organizer with Havaar’s campaign to alleviate sanctions-related medical shortages in Iran.

Co-sponsored by Havaar: Iranian Initiative Against War, Sanctions and State Repression, Raha Iranian Feminist Collective, the Campaign for Peace and Democracy and the War Resisters League.

Please RSVP to our event posting on Facebook and help us spread the word.

Havaar Launches Campaign to Help Iranians Access Life Saving Medicine

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Havaar

Sign the Petition Now by Clicking Here!

Sanctions against Iran are often presented as a humane alternative to war, but in fact they have caused massive economic hardship and a social crisis in Iranian society that has reached life-threatening proportions. The U.S.-led sanctions regime is strangling the Iranian people, cutting off trade relations, financial transactions, and access to vital goods. The results have been stark and devastating: currency devaluation, skyrocketing inflation, factory closures, layoffs, unpaid wages, and now a major healthcare crisis.

Without access to the international banking system, Iranians are finding it increasingly difficult to import life-saving medicines or the raw materials for many domestically-made drugs—a situation which a January 8, 2013 Associated Press report deemed “a sign of the domino effect of sanctions on everyday life.” The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the U.S. agency that regulates sanctions, has officially exempted medicine-related transactions as a humanitarian gesture. However, at this point few banks are willing to do business with Iranian pharmaceutical importers. Shortages and steep price increases of drugs used to treat cancer, hemophilia, multiple sclerosis and other ailments have put hundreds of thousands at risk and resulted in an unknown but increasing number of deaths.

This amounts to collective punishment of an entire population. Sanctions and the constant threat of military intervention by the U.S. and Israel target the very people who have already been struggling to live under a corrupt government that has mismanaged the economy and thwarted basic democratic rights. The resulting state of emergency in Iran has only strengthened the hand of government officials who seek to crush popular movements inside the country under the pretext of defending national security.

Havaar continues to speak out against this silent war, and today we are announcing an effort to pressure international banking institutions to process financial transactions related to the importation of medicine so that Iranians can acquire life-saving drugs.

We are asking individuals and organizations to join us by signing our petition addressed to CEOs of major banks. This petition is just the first step in a broader campaign against the entire sanctions regime: rather than being an alternative to war, sanctions wreak havoc on the life chances of entire populations and are often used to pave the way for military intervention, as our brothers and sisters in Iraq have experienced firsthand.

Havaar’s guiding principle is to stand in solidarity with the Iranian people. Therefore, we will continue to actively oppose threats of military attack from the U.S. and Israel—as well as other forms of external intervention in Iran—and the repression that the Iranian government continues to direct against its own people.

Please sign the petition today, share it on social networks, and be sure to follow Havaar on Facebook for future updates.

Peace and solidarity,
Havaar